Looking back in 2011

Looking back in 2011

Last year was one of the most productive for Aida which managed to
revive its fundamental architecture so that we can say we are now on the
frontiers of the rapidly advancing web technology.

So, what were the main achievements in last year:

1. Three versions were released in one year: 6.1, 6.2, 6.3!

2. New event framework was a major architectural redesign, which started
from idea by Herbert König from a wish list and evolves through the year
into really robust but yet simple event framework for those days very
popular asynchronous event driven web development (pretty like node.js).

4. @aidaweb on Twitter was started to report about interesting web
technology news, blogs, articles and of course about Aida and Smalltalk
in general. We have currently 128 followers and what is interesting -
from many other communities like Ruby, web design etc. Idea of that
effort is also to spread the awareness of Smalltalk in broader web
technology world.

5. Comparison of Aida vs Seaside and Iliad Smalltalk web frameworks[1].
Well, that one was hard. Initial idea was to make a balanced comparison,
but puting facts on the table obviously don't please everyone, so
comparison is now still Aida centric, from our viewpoint how good we
compete with others and where are our weaknesses.

1. ToDo example application [2] was done as part of "Comparison by
example" initiative by Hannes Hirzel. This ToDo example is so far the
best showcase of what Aida is able to achieve including Ajax form
validation, widgets, realtime support etc.

2. Aida is now continously integrated with Pharo by Jenkins CI server
provided by ESUG and French INRIA [3], which allow us to detect early
any problem running on bleeding edge Pharos.

Any additional thought about our last year performance is greatly
appreciated!